The Day I Met Jacob Black
by captainofyourship
Summary: The hungry sea has gathered itself into a giant wave and flooded the beach at La Push. Bella's life is saved by a Quileute boy. But when she visits him in hospital, he denies the whole episode. He tells her to go home and forget about it.


Characters owned by SM. I started this for the Superhero contest but I didn't get it finished.

**The Day I Met Jacob Black**

I know every inch of this beach. I know its dimensions and its moods, its colors and contours. I know every grain of sand, every overhanging branch, every leaf dropped or yet attached, every stone, every shell.

I've come here several times a year for my whole life, which doesn't actually add up to that many visits, but I'm observant, and this beach has a hold on me. This summer, I'm here nearly every day. There are residents in the area, as this is home to three hundred or so people living on their ancestral land, and some of them see me now and nod. They acknowledge the frequency of my presence and don't seem to regard me as a trespasser.

Today is warm and there are people about - a bunch who look like teenagers, and today the beach has holes.

Really, holes. They are anomalies. They are phenomena.

The teenagers are locals, from their appearance. They're standing with nets, like butterfly nets, around one of the holes and looking down into it.

It's roughly round, and about four yards across. I approach and peer, and I see what everyone is looking at. The hole is a couple of yards deep, and in the bottom of it is water. In the water is a jellyfish.

It's bioluminescent, softly and gently glowing down where the sun isn't quite reaching directly. It's incredibly beautiful. The water is flat and calm down there, but unbuffeted by current the shining, pearlescent thing is swaying on its myriad pretty filaments, so dainty and delicate.

I think back to what I know about the hydromedusa, which is what this creature looks like. The bell is about the size of the human head, and the tendrils hang delicately below, three times that length. They sting, and are to be avoided at all costs.

One of the teenagers reaches down with his net as if to capture it. I don't see how this can be right, but he is one of the Quileute, and this is his land and his home, and perhaps by that logic, it is his jellyfish, too. I wonder what he wants it for, but perhaps it has medicinal uses, or has some kind of spiritual significance. He appears absorbed, as entranced as I am by the beauty and unexpectedness of the thing we've come across.

Then, to our surprise it rises, taking to the air. Jellyfish seem to fly in their watery element, but they are never actually airborne. As I stare, gasps and cries sound from around us, and I look towards the sounds. Other jellyfish are emerging from some of the other holes in the sand, and the group disperses as everybody goes after them, their nets now raised instead of lowered.

The boy and I walk, keeping pace with the wafting creature from the first hole, the boy on his side of the little abyss, and me on mine. The space down there is elongating and our quarry keeps changing its elevations as it hovers, sometimes up, sometimes down. It seems that it would be easier to keep track of it if we jumped in to what is now a tunnel, so we do, the boy and me. We don't speak as we follow our moon-colored gonfalon, through the complicated and twisting corridor, which has other openings coming off it, other doorways, other passages. Unerringly and undistracted, we follow. He has discarded his net now and we proceed in wonder, seeking only to watch this miraculous thing for as long as we can. We're moving east, away from the sea, towards the trees and the woods.

But I hear a sound. A sound that shouldn't be. A rushing, crashing mess of a noise, and he and I both catch one another's eyes in surprise. The tunnel walls rise perhaps two or three feet over his head, and he is much taller than me. I almost have to crane my neck as we turn towards the source of the sound.

Behind us, back, back, and high, so very high, we can see the ocean. It shouldn't be there, but we can see a great wall of sparkling ultramarine topped with foam, impossibly tall.

And just as suddenly as we see it, the screams start. Above, ahead, and alongside of us, people have realized that waves just don't come that high. Waves are not as big as skyscrapers.

The top of the wave curls and curves, and it is starting to descend. We are trapped, chasing a jellyfish that thinks it's a butterfly.

The boy takes my hand and starts to run even though I know it's pointless, and he must know it too. Once the wave has crested and broken, the sea will rush into the system of caves and holes and tunnels, and sweep everything in its path. We will be fighting for breath, fighting for life, and it is a fight we are unlikely to win.

The jellyfish perhaps felt the will of the water as it readied itself to rise. Is that why it trembled in those still ponds? Is that why it took to the air? If only we could do the same.

The noise continues to grow, the wall of water at our backs is glittering in the sunshine, blue against the blue sky, hanging suspended, and the Quileute boy is holding my hand so tightly he is hurting me.

"I won't leave you," he says, and it's the first thing he's said. The jellyfish have gone, there is only him and me, and the sound of people crying, the dull thumps of people running. There is no point in running.

He wraps both arms around me and pulls me to him, kissing my forehead. We don't know each other, but we are in this together.

I reach my face to his, and move to kiss his cheek, because we are going to die. I don't know his name and I only set eyes on him ten or fifteen minutes ago, before the world began to end.

His arms tighten, and the water comes.

But then somehow, together, tacitly, we decide to run. We won't await this drowning death passive and floating with our hair swerving around us in the rush of marine. We turn, with the sea lapping noisily like an eager puppy first at our heels, then higher, more of an eager dragoncub. Our calves and knees are licked as we run, my hand in his, onwards along the twisting tunnel. The oncoming droplets are eager for us, reaching and overtaking, splashing the curved sand walls ahead and flashing brightly back.

My companion has very long legs and takes long strides and is hauling me with him. He tries to scoop me up, he won't desert me though he is faster, and his arms encircle me awkwardly, pushing me around his body.

"Get on my back," he urges.

I do, and he plunges forward and upwards.

We are lifting, my arms and legs holding tightly round him, as we leave the water that would drag us and hug us and hold us, and we clear the walls of the tunnel, still ascending. And as I clutch, piggy-back, onto him, his clothes disappear. The sleek black hair of his scalp merges with copper hair sprouting from him like a dream, and he changes beneath me, muscles coiling and springing as he moves, and he's not a boy any more. He's not the Quileute youth from the beach. I am sitting astride the spine of some kind of animal, agile and strong, leaping from the tunnel charging across the sand, and then springing from rock to foothold to crevice in the cliff, ever upwards.

His ears are flat back against his head and they are pointed and furred. His shoulders are narrow, as are the ribs between my thighs, though there beats a thunderous and heroic heart. He is the size of an ox, yet I see before me a broad face tipped with a muzzle, and inside my legs are pounding forelimbs, muscles thrusting and pushing, and I feel the power of strong hindlimbs behind me. We surge up, and it appears I am clasping for my life onto a wolf.

Still we rise, as I am looking down at the swirling disaster we soar above.

Up, up and away, I'm on his back and he's in my arms and below us the water is dirty where it has whipped up the sand, and it has careened up the shore, rushing and speeding. Trees have been snapped in its hunger and there is no beach left to be seen, just the blanket of swell, now a soup thick with trunks and branches and seafloor and god knows what else.

It seems to have stopped coming though, as we reach the highest point and he comes to a halt, trembling until I loosen my hold on him and fall off.

There's a bed of moss and ferns and it's soft and damp and I sink into it, stunned momentarily, but a moment is all I've got. He nuzzles me with a moist black nose, checking I've survived the frantic ascent.

I raise my head, groggy from the tumble, to see him standing before me, now a tall and strong youth again, at the ledge, the edge, the precipice.

He steps off, disappears, hurtling presumably down to the swelling, bubbling soup there, and I pull myself upright urgently to plead, to beg, to call him to me. He's gone.

I can't follow, I can't - what would be the point? I don't have superpowers to defy the ocean, to brave the current. Down there all is chaos and I can't see him or anyone else. I perform a mental count - there were how many? Him, five, six others? Oh, I don't even remember - think, _think -_ how many people are missing? How many can he save - one boy who can turn into a giant wolf and scale a cliff an ordinary-sized person would have trouble with unless they had an abseiling kit? Oh, no, that's for going down - what am I doing? Thinking? I should _do_ something.

I hesitate at the edge, I hesitate to follow. If I jump, I will die. I cannot do anything to help those who are down there, and I cannot help the Quileute boy.

I slink back from there, hopeless, defeated by the sea I have so recently been delivered from. I must be forty feet up, and the wave looked higher than this, but its plunge along the beach has lessened its height. Its force is now concentrated on reach and appetite - on consuming the trees and the foreshore, and extending the sea's grip upon the land. I look over and I see the ocean claim parts of La Push which were previously sand under clouded sky. The sand yields so easily.

I'm not conscious of losing a second watching, but the scene below me changes, and helicopters come. The waters recede and seem to stabilize, and the foreshore has narrowed to a fragment of what it once was. Boats are appearing, and some sort of search and rescue mission is underway.

I don't know if the boy is coming back. I don't know if he has survived.

I stagger along the cliff path, knowing more or less where I am. It is a half hour's walk to where I parked my truck, and the whole time I am out of range for my cell phone.

But suddenly, it vibrates in my pocket. Seven messages, sent a matter of minutes apart. My father.

The most recent message is first, and his breath is catching. I struggle to understand his broken speech, until realization dawns that he is crying.

"Bella, baby _please_ don't be at the beach, _please_ baby, Bella, Bella..."

The messages go back in time.

"Honey, I'm hoping you're out with friends and you've got your phone off. Are you at the movies?"

"Call me as soon as you get this."

"Bella, where are you?"

Back to the first. "Bella, something's happened at First Beach. A freak wave. The whole place is underwater. I've got to go and - ah - check it all out. You went to town, didn't you hon? Port Angeles? Call me, call me, Bella."

He is the Chief of Police, and as soon as word got around about this tidal wave, he would have jumped in his car and broken the speed limit to see if he could help. He is that guy. He's a cop because he believes in it.

And now I've been out of range at La Push for a while, he doesn't know where I am, and if he's gone down there to try and help, he's out of range. I call. He can't answer.

"Daddy, I'm okay, I'm fine. Where are you?"

And I don't know what to do, apart from go home.

I walk back to the road, where my truck is parked. The road is high, and the water didn't get up anywhere this far, and I climb gratefully into the cab and sit there. Should I go back? Can I help my father? Can I help the golden-eyed Quileute youth who saved my life?

And what the hell happened?

I start to question everything. I was on the beach. I was on the cliff. A natural phenomenon occurred - there must have seismic activity out at sea which caused a disturbance in the beach. Cavities opened in the sand, and an oceanic wave collected itself and dove into shore. Creatures that would normally be sea-dwelling had come in, I had fallen asleep way up high and had half-woken to see a hallucination of a boy...

I don't know what happened. Jellyfish don't fly - that's one thing. People don't turn into wolves - that's another.

I drive home, and wait for my father. I send message after message.

"Dad, I'm fine. I'm at home. Are you still at La Push? What's happening?"

"Dad, call as soon as you can."

"_Daddy_?"

I put the TV on.

There was a disaster.

A tidal wave had swept the shore along the Olympic Peninsula, concentrating on the beaches of the La Push area. Two as yet unidentified bodies had been recovered from the water, along with one one survivor. They show an image, like a school photo, and it's a Quiluete kid. They call him Jacob Black.

I can't pull my face from my hands, but I can't not look, either. It's an old photo, but it's him, my savior, my rescuer. His name is Jacob Black.

"Daddy, I'm home. Are you okay? Are you coming home?" I send three times, knowing my father won't come home, even if he's fine. He'll stay, he'll stay. Oh, God, please Daddy, don't go into the water. Don't go _near_ the water.

But my father will be there, co-ordinating search parties, and talking to the Quiluete elders. I think back, counting, counting... there had been seven people with Jacob. I hadn't really looked at them too closely, but they were all young. The entire native population at La Push is less than four hundred. Seven teenagers is too many for any community to lose. One teenager is too many.

Evening draws in as I sit huddle on the sofa, staring dumbly at the tv which hasn't updated the story for a while. My father has to come home because they can't search in the dark. Where is he?

And Jacob? Would he be at the hospital? Depending on how he is he'll either be here in Forks or he will have been airlifted to Port Angeles, which has better facilities.

How is he? They didn't say, the stupid newsreader didn't say. I could get in my truck and drive back out to the Rez and offer to help. I could take coffee and food for the searchers, and blankets for the people they find. There will be five, right? They'll find those five kids all together, clinging in the branch of some tree, frightened, sure, but none the worse for wear.

My father would have a fit if I turned up down there. He'd send me away. I could go in the morning, but he'd never allow me there after dark.

I must have fallen asleep there in front of the tv, because the next thing I know it's not dark any more, it's morning, and my phone's ringing.

"Bella, you're at home?" Charlie asks, and he sounds dreadful.

"Yes, Dad, where are you? Are you all right?" I say desperately.

"I'm at the station. It's been a very, very bad night. I'll be home soon, but only to change my clothes. You got my messages? You know about the flood? Bella, two kids from the Rez are dead, drowned, and another one's in hospital, and there are five missing. The entire Quiluete community are in shock. I'm going back out straightaway to keep looking, but we're not hopeful. The water's cold, Bella, it's so cold out there..." Dad's crying.

I fix some food, not knowing how else to occupy myself, and when he comes in all he does is grab me. He holds me so hard it hurts.

"Daddy, what's it like there now? Are you going to be safe?" I say, voice trembling. I haven't called him Daddy since I was a child. I'm holding him just as hard as he's holding me. I know he's needed back there, but I don't want him to go.

"The situation seems stable. We don't really know. The shoreline has moved by about seventy feet - so the beach is smaller than it was. We don't quite know yet how far the wave came in, but there's debris everywhere - tree trunks and branches. We've got boats and a couple of choppers for the search... I'll be gone all day, Bells."

He sounds so tired, and it's obvious he hasn't slept. He throws down a cup of coffee and I fix him a couple of sandwiches, which he grabs on his way back out the door.

"Can I do anything? Can I help?" I beg him.

"You can stay home, and stay safe," he says, and tears are still there.

I can't possibly stay home. I have to go and see Jacob Black.

I shower and dress and yank open the door of my truck. We're in a very small town, and the hospital is only a couple of miles away. I cover the distance pretty quickly.

I don't know anything about how hospitals work, and I don't know where he'll be. Intensive care? Are people in the intensive care ward allowed visitors? Maybe he's well enough to be in a normal ward?

I go up to the front desk and ask for Jacob Black. There is plenty of action going on, people walking briskly to and fro, and speaking in hushed tones, and I hear a constant "sshh" sound, which is generated by everybody here talking about what has happened at La Push. La Push. La Pushhh.

"Jacob Black? Yes, are you family?" the receptionist asks.

Clearly I'm probably not family, because, I mean look at me. If I have any Native American blood, it's extremely well hidden.

"No, I'm - a friend," I reply.

"He's in C ward. Take the elevator up to the next floor, and it's the first door on your right."

There are eight beds in the ward. He's in the first one. He looks asleep. I approach quietly and sit in the chair next to the bed and I can't take my eyes from him. He's very tall, he's huge and he has short-cropped, thick jet-black hair. His skin is reddish-brown against the stark white of the hospital gown or whatever it is he's wearing. There are no clues to give away his extraordinary ability, nothing to hint at what he did yesterday. I feel like I'm looking at the wolf in the Little Red Riding Hood story, but he has no whiskers. Not even a hint of stubble on his smooth chin, though on the news last night they said he's eighteen years old.

I wait. I wait. I'm only allowed two hours in here and then visiting time is over for three hours until the afternoon. If he doesn't wake up, it doesn't matter, because I can look at him. His lashes are thick and inky. His arms are thick and strong-looking, his hands large, the fingers long, but slender, with knobbly knuckles. He is extraordinarily beautiful, although I'm probably not in the least objective, because I think he's an angel. Somebody this beautiful cannot die by drowning - they can't die any way at all. They have to be immortal.

I spend some time wondering where his family are, and I think they're probably all taking part in the searches. Still I sit, and after what must have been an hour, his eyelashes flutter and his head turns on the pillow, and he wakes.

He frowns immediately. He looks about at where he is, and tries to get up.

"Jacob, you're in hospital. You're safe. You have to stay here," I say, and he turns. He looks momentarily confused, then he sees who I am.

"The girl from the beach. You're okay? I have to go, what am I doing here? I'm no fucking use here, I have to go," he is saying urgently, and trying to sit up.

"No, you have to stay. You were pulled from the water. This is where you have to be," I tell him, trying to sound authoritative, trying to sound like my Dad Charlie, when he told me I had to stay at home.

"What time is it? What _day_ is it? What's happening?" he asks me. I hardly know how to answer.

"It's about eleven in the morning, the day after. I don't know where things stand right now, but last night two bodies had been found, plus you. I'm so sorry, Jacob, I'm so sorry."

He cries openly, not even attempting to hold it back.

"Who?" he whispers brokenly.

"I don't know. Maybe I can find out. My dad's the police chief, he's at the scene," I mumble. "I can't contact him yet though. The beach is out of cell reach, as you know."

"You've got a phone?" he asks. "Can I use it?"

His hand is already reaching. I'm already handing it to him. He taps out a number, and I stand and walk back to the door to give him privacy. I don't know who he's calling.

When I walk back to him he's expressionless.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, flatly.

I stumble over what I want to say. "I needed to see that you were okay. And I needed to thank you. It's so inadequate, I know, just to say thank you to someone who has saved your life, but right now it's all I have."

"Saved your life?" he says, staring straight into me. "What are you talking about?"

"I'd have been down there on the beach still, I'd be missing right now, or I'd have been washed up... if it wasn't for you, and what happened," I reply.

"You weren't on the beach. You were on the cliff. You were forty feet from the beach, vertically," he says, looking into my eyes unflinchingly.

"No, I wasn't!" I protest. "I understand you probably can't talk about it, but I was on the beach with you! We were looking at the holes in the sand, and the jellyfish, and we were walking there together, and then the wave came, and you - you did what you did, you helped me, you took me up away from the water, and then when I was safe you left me there, and you jumped off the cliff..."

"You're crazy," he states. "You are absolutely, completely, fucking crazy. There are no holes in La Push, there are no jellyfish, and how the hell do you think I could have gotten you up a cliff?"

I have to keep my voice down, there are other people in there. I have to almost whisper. "You transformed into a wolf, and I rode on your back."

"Call the insane asylum! There's a lunatic is on the loose," he says, staring. "There is no such fucking thing as a human being who can turn into a wolf. What are you on? Mushrooms? Acid? Were you dreaming up there on that cliff top? I saw you there, and I saw what was going on down below, and I saw people in the water. I jumped. I ended up in here, and apparently they didn't. End of story."

"No, that's not what happened," I try to insist, but he is adamant.

"I'm really tired, and my sisters are on their way here, and I don't even know you. I need to rest, not listen to some ranting girl who reads too much werewolf fiction. Please go," he says.

And two girls come in, and they look like him, and they rush to him in tears, with their arms held out to him, and I'm intruding on their grief. I have to go.

The tv is on when I get home. I normally never have it on, but I need the company, with Charlie gone. I sit like a zombie in front of it, unable to eat, unable to concentrate.

I'm seriously doubting my sanity. I don't read any werewolf fiction, and I don't see werewolf films. Werewolves form no part of my life whatsoever, and I don't even dedicate any time to thinking about _actual_ wolves. But I _was_ on the beach, I _was_ with the bunch of adolescents from the Rez, and I _did_ jump on Jacob Black's back, and he _did_ change into a wolf and leap to safety, carrying me well out of harm's way. _That's what happened_.

I am not crazy. That's what happened.

The news comes on, and there hasn't been much of a change since last night in the situation at La Push. No new bodies have been discovered, except for one. I'm not sure I believe my ears, so I wait for them to repeat it. Someone else has been found in the water. Not exactly someone, more like some_thing_. A dead wolf.

The Quiluete people have asked for the wolf's body to be given to them, as they say the animal is part of their spirituality, and they need to pay it final respects, and give it a fitting burial.

_That's it._

I know now that Jacob was lying to me in the hospital. I know that his people want the wolf because it's one of them. I can't believe it, but I know. I have to go back, and tell him that I know.

You can visit the hospital again in the afternoons, from two until four. The woman at reception nods at me, and I go straight through.

He's alone again, he's awake, and he scowls when he sees me.

"Did you hear? Has anyone told you? I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, there's been another body," I mumble.

"I know," he says, and he won't look at me.

"It wasn't a person," I say.

"I know," he answers. He looks terrible. Sorrow and shock are all over him.

"Was he your brother?" I ask gently.

"We're all brothers," he says, and he's not bothering to deny it now. He's speaking very quietly, so am I, and there's a hub-bub, and drawn curtains around the nearest beds. There's a radio playing, people are talking, and no-one can possibly hear what we're saying.

"If you ever tell anyone, I'll deny it, and you'll look like a Grade-A nutcase," he tells me, and I nod.

"Of course I won't tell," I assure him.

"Can you sit here on the bed? Can you hold my hand?" he asks, and I do it gladly.

"When we take the wolf shape, we're connected to one another's minds," he says, almost absently, his eyes looking at nothing. "His name is - or was - Paul. I heard his thoughts. He changed at the same time I did, and he had to make a choice, just like I did. You were the nearest person to me, and I didn't even think, I just did what I could for you. He tried to save the nearest person to him. Our girls can't change, just the boys. He went for the closest girl, but he wasn't quick enough to get her onto his back. She fell almost straight away, and she panicked. The water was crashing over them. We're stronger as wolves than we are as humans, but as wolves we have no hands, only jaws. He grabbed her by her clothes, but they tore. Then he grabbed her by her arm, and he injured her. She was screaming. The current was pulling them, and he'd bitten her badly in his attempt to hold her. He couldn't get his head out to breathe and still hold onto her. He wouldn't let her go. He knew it was the end for both of them, but he wouldn't leave her to die alone."

The tears are pouring out of me, salt, salt tears - the brine bequeathed from our ancestors when they crawled from the oceans, millennia ago.

"So there are others like you? You're not the only one?" I manage to ask him.

"I am now," he mutters. "I ccouldn't hear the others. They didn't change, and they're not there. They're not there."

We're both quiet. I may be with him, but he's alone in his grief. I can barely imagine it. I can't even see it, as he has withdrawn.

"What's your name?" he asks suddenly.

"Isabella," I say. "Bella. Bella Swan. Isabella Swan."

"That's about fifteen names," he says.

"Bella."

"Bella, I think I'm okay, physically, and I'm going to get up and walk out of here, and I'm going back down to La Push. Your dad's there? So's mine, my sisters told me. I have to be there, I have to help. Nobody knows you were there, and you're not going to try to tell anybody, are you? Maybe I'll see you to talk about this once it's all over. Jesus."

"I can drive you," I say, and it's absolutely the last thing I want on this earth, to take Jacob Black back to the water. But there are still four of his people missing. I can see he'll go anyway, even if he turns into a wolf and runs there.

"Can you see where they put my clothes?" he asks, and of course, no, I can't. He was pulled out of the water and his clothes would have been saturated. Who knows where they are? There must be a hospital laundry, but I wouldn't have a clue where it is. Oh, how are we going to do this?

He gets up, and he's in some kind of hospital issue pajamas - trousers and a tunic, and he shrugs, he doesn't care.

We're in my truck, we somehow got past everyone without being stopped and questioned, and we're on our way, and I tell him he's a hero. He saved me, and now he wants to go back for his friends.

"I'm not a hero. I am _not_ a fucking hero. If I was, I would have saved everyone," he mutters.

And a thought strikes me.

"Do you regret it? Do you regret that it was me you helped?" I ask him, appalled. "Do you regret that it wasn't one of your own people?"

He's quiet, staring at the road ahead, staring at his own thoughts."No, of course I don't," he said. "I regret that the whole horrible scenario happened, but I was in a position where I could do something for someone and I did it. After I left you up there I looked down and I couldn't see any of them, and I couldn't hear them, and I went down anyway, and I just - I listened, and I looked and scented for them - "

He's getting upset. Very upset. He's agitated.

"I wish I could have saved everyone, I wish the thing didn't happen. I'm sorry I couldn't save them all - but am I sorry I didn't just jump over you and splash water in your face and leave you to drown while I went off to help one of my friends? Of course I'm not."

"Maybe they made it out. Maybe they're somewhere warm and dry even now, and the rescuers are giving them hot chocolate and they're wrapped in blankets..." I say. It sounds like a platitude, but I'm not saying it just to be reassuring. I'm saying it because I hope fervently that it's true.

"No," he says.

"How do you know? Because you can't hear them?"

"I know because I can't _feel_ them." The air of finality in his voice is devastating.

"Are you really the only one?"

He sighs. "I don't know. The change can't happen until you're sixteen or seventeen, because before then your body just can't handle it. There are some younger guys in the tribe, they're twelve and thirteen - we won't know about them until they're old enough. But God, I don't want to be the only one. The last one."

We're off the highway now, and on the La Push road. He's silent, and when I look at him he's staring intensely at nothing. Ahead of us loom some brightly striped barricades, and there are a couple of men standing watch.

"Road closed. There's been a flood," one of them shouts. "Turn around, go back."

Then he seems to recognize Jacob. "Hey, come on in," he calls, gesturing with an arm.

"He means just me, not you," Jacob says, his hand already on the door handle. "I want you to promise me something."

I bite my lip. "Yes?" Anything.

"You don't live here - I know you don't. I know the chief's daughter lives down south somewhere - Arizona? Go home. You're alive, and you're okay. You went for a walk and you were on the cliffs, and the ocean went apeshit and you were well away from it, and it was your lucky day. Your lucky, fucking day. That's your story."

He opens the door, continuing, "You don't belong here. Go home."

And he strides away, in his hospital issue pajamas. The men at the barricades know him and they don't stop him. They nod as he walks past, and he's so tall and strong you wouldn't think an ocean could get the better of him.

I wait and wait, and he doesn't come back, and Charlie doesn't appear, and still I wait, getting cold and hungry, and the guys come over and say, "There's nothing for you to do here, miss. It's a police matter, and a local matter."

I turn my truck around, performing a thirty-point turn on this narrow road, and I do exactly as they say and go home.

I'm still in shock, I think. I don't know what to believe - what my own memory tells me or what my logical brain tells me... what Jacob Black insisted on at first, or what he told me later.

I fall asleep again, exhausted, on the sofa, having cooked for Charlie and waited for him to come home. They can't search at night - why is he still out there? But I guess it's his community and his home. The kids missing must be kids he's known all their lives, and their parents are his friends. He's feeling the loss badly, and he wants to be around them.

I don't see him until the morning, and I've lain in bed churning all night, turning ideas over in my head.

"How did things go?" I ask him - both of us bleary-eyed, me fixing him eggs so at least he'll have a decent breakfast inside of him before he heads out again. This must be the worst disaster in Forks' history.

"Not good," he says. "It's time to give up on the search, and start the cleanup operation. The elders have declared their young people lost, and they want to have a ceremony of celebration of their lives. They need to bury the bodies they found, and they want to bury the wolf too, with the two kids. Bells, I know this has been a kinda shitty vacation for you. This is the shittiest thing that has ever happened here. Come back one day when the sun's shining, huh? Or maybe I should visit you next time."

He's such a quiet, reticent man that even if I spent entire days in his company he probably wouldn't talk much more than this, but if I spent entire days in his company I think I'd like it. His quiet ways are so different to my mother's, with her cheery outlook and constant chatter. I like him a lot, and this has been the first time for me to see quite how much he means to me.

"Uh, Dad, I went to see Jacob Black in hospital. Just to say hello to him," I inform him, because there's a pretty good chance Dad will hear his daughter was seen going to C Ward.

"Did you?" he asks me. "You and Jake played together when you were little, although you probably wouldn't remember."

Of course I don't. I can't equate the huge youth from the beach and the hospital with some little smiley-faced, chubby-cheeked child, it's too far a stretch.

"He seems a really nice guy," I offer.

"He is, Bella. He's the chief's son, he'll take over from Billy when Billy goes, and he'll be in charge. He's strong and solid, a good kid - a good _young man_," he corrects himself. "Jesus, he'll be the chief of a smaller tribe, though."

And I'm due to go home at the end of the week - I only have a few more days here.

Charlie's hardly home, and when he is he floats around sadder than a ghost.

Somewhere in amongst all his not talking it slips out that he and Jacob Black's father have been mates since they were children. Before this happened they got together now and again to watch baseball or football, drink beer and argue good-naturedly. I know so little of my dad.

He's working very hard on the clean-up operation, and he still has his usual work at the station. Apart from this monumental disaster not much happens in Forks, but there are still occasional drunken fights he has to sort out, or kids caught with weed he needs to caution.

A couple of quiet days later the funeral is held, down on the Rez, and I attend. Jacob is there, tall and serious. He hasn't worn a suit, as some of the other men have. He's in jeans and a shirt, but he has such a commanding presence he looks anything but casual. Other than a nod he doesn't acknowledge me.

I see how people approach him, how they respond to him and act around him, and he has a natural and calm authority. I'm reminded of the way he was at the beach - he took charge, he decided, he saved me and then he went back for the others. Of course he's going to be a chief. He couldn't be anything else.

Afterwards at the wake I'm standing awkwardly, bemused that although this is an occasion for mourning, it is also a celebration. There are speeches, but they're not stilted and formal. They're free-flowing and down-to-earth, and are along the lines of the community's appreciation at having had such fine young people amongst them. At the same time, they tell anecdotes about cheekiness and spirit, and even bad behavior. They draw real pictures - not glossed-over ones. God, these kids were loved. It's so positive.

Jacob appears next to me and thanks me for coming, and he says my father's help has been invaluable. He goes on to say he hopes my next vacation will be somewhere far inland. He studiously avoids saying anything else. It's as though nothing happened between us at all.

"Jacob..." I say, and I put my hand on his arm, and he looks down at my hand, and back up to my face.

"I understand. Well, I don't, but I see the way you want to play it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did, and I'm sorry... sorry from the bottom of my heart, too, for what happened to your friends," I stammer.

"Yes," he mutters, and goes to speak to someone else.

A day later the local paper carries an article about the funeral, the second biggest thing to have ever happened in Forks. Dad was mentioned, saying, "They were wonderful young men and women. Their loss affects us all," and Billy Black said, "This is not the right order of things, for parents to be farewelling their kids. It's supposed to be the other way around."

And a day after that I sit on the plane that's taking me back to the Arid Zone, where all the water is underground and behaving as it should be, obeying gravity and not trying to submerge part of a continent. I sit wondering if I'll ever stop remembering what I can't forget - all of it, and everything, and

Jacob Black.

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.

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End file.
